Under the Knife(28)

Sebastian, only fourteen at the time, had concluded that the whole thing was total, unmitigated bullshit. He still thought so: popular kids pretending and preening, grubbing for more popularity. They’d known exactly what they were doing up on that stage. And the hypnotist? Please. He’d known ten-year-olds down on the corner that could run a better con with three-card monte than that bloated asshole.

But Finney’s device was the real deal. No bullshit, cheesy-ass lounge act here. He’d seen it with his own eyes, in the tapes. Not hypnosis, not really. It was more like persuasion.

And this was what he and Finney had planned for Wu this morning.

The device’s electrical signals would render her susceptible to spoken commands. The designers called this process—the combination of electrical signals and verbal commands—embedding. Once embedding was complete, Wu would experience an overwhelming desire to carry out the commands but would otherwise act and feel normally. Certain psychoactive drugs, administered before the signals, would make her mind more pliable. He’d seen to it that Wu had received healthy doses of these this morning, when he’d implanted the device in her ear.

Embedding had its limitations, and it didn’t always work. Complex commands—things that required multiple steps or complicated reasoning—were out of the question because they would confuse the subject. Sometimes, too, the subjects fought back and resisted the impulses, especially if the suggestions weren’t in some way connected to their personal experiences. You couldn’t ask a plumber to fly an airplane, or, for that matter, a pilot to fix your toilet. It didn’t work that way.

Afterward, most of the subjects didn’t remember anything specific about the embedding process—just the urge to carry out the commands and a sense of having awoken from a dream. Those that did would describe vivid out-of-body experiences, or the sensation of being split in two. It was like I was seeing and talking to my twin, one of them had later said. Some reported buzzing sounds, and feelings of unease. Confusion. Dizziness. Vomiting. A few had had seizures.

And one other thing: You could transmit the persuasion signals only in brief, concentrated bursts. Otherwise, you risked scrambling the subject’s brains to jelly.

In the videos, this had happened more than once, when the interrogators had intentionally bombarded subjects with suggestions. Just to see what would happen.

The results were always the same: pain, and screaming, which sometimes lasted hours, then silent, openmouthed stares. Sebastian couldn’t decide which was more disturbing: the screaming or the staring, the subjects’ eyes fixed on something beyond the camera lens that only they could see. Those men had all died a few days later, still staring, and no one figured out why. Their autopsies had showed zilch.

Sebastian had made himself watch every one of the videos. He hadn’t had to do that. He sure as hell didn’t want to. He’d seen a lot of disturbing shit over the years, but it didn’t get any more goddamn disturbing than this.

But he was a professional, and he always acted like one. So he’d watched the videos and learned everything he could about the device. He’d studied all of its components, specifications, capabilities, and shortcomings. Alfonso had always insisted Sebastian was good at tinkering with things. And now he knew just as much about the goddamn thing as Finney.

Hell, he thought. Maybe more.

He checked his watch again and tried not to think about the teenager, twitching, curled up on the floor in her cell.

Yes, there were plenty of bad guys in the world.

When did I become one of them?





RITA


“Operate on Mrs. Sanchez? You mean … with the auto-surgeon?”

Rita stood up. It took a surprising amount of effort. She fixed her eyes on the ceiling, as if Finney were lurking somewhere around up there, in the crawl space above the ceiling tiles.

“Yes. I want you to perform the auto-surgeon operation. This morning. As scheduled.”

“That’s … it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter?”

Every neuron in her brain was screaming at her that operating this morning was the wrong thing to do.

“I don’t think … I’m not sure I’m up to operating this morning. I was going to, uh, cancel the surgery.”

Finney didn’t say anything.

“I just—I want to be safe,” she added.

A long silence followed. Eventually, he said, “What about Jenny? Were you worried about being safe with her?”

Her throat tightened. She bunched up her fists and drove them underneath her glasses and into her eyes.

She would not cry.

Not with him around.

But the problem, of course, was that he was always around.





FINNEY


Studying the readouts on his tablet, he denied himself, once again, the satisfaction of a smile.

She’s ready for embedding.

He’d prepped her long enough. Plowed the rich soil of her mind. Now it was time to sow the seeds and convince her to operate on Mrs. Sanchez, and to set the main part of his plan in motion.

Dr. Wu hadn’t been that far off the mark when she’d guessed that the device was a cochlear implant. It was, of sorts: conceived by a small, innovative start-up focused on curing deafness, which he’d happened across several years ago. He’d invested a healthy amount in it. Now the company was on the verge of revolutionizing the treatment of deafness and netting him tens of millions in the process.